In Rome the surprises truly never end, you know that by now. What I am telling you about today underlines how the Eternal City shows the best of itself not only in the historic center, but also on the outskirts . Sometimes in an unexpected way, given that much of what comes from the past has been literally submerged by the modern city, so much so that even geologically speaking, if I may say so, something has changed in two thousand years. Follow your tour guide to the outskirts of Rome to learn about something very special.

If you go to the Quadraro area, at a certain point you will find yourself faced with a sort of hill, completely covered by plants and grass. Well, what seems like a mere natural formation is, in reality, a mound tomb, called Monte del Grano. The nickname comes from the fact that, seen from the outside, this very ancient building with funerary use seems, to all intents and purposes, to be a grain shed, but an overturned one. But it is much more, because in this case we are talking about a real mausoleum which, with its dimensions (140 meters in diameter and 20 meters in height) becomes the third largest in Rome (after the mausoleums of Hadrian and Augustus). The dimensions, therefore, suggest that whoever was buried here must have enjoyed a certainly enviable social status. After all, like all self-respecting tombs, this one also naturally has a cell inside which a deceased person was buried. The center of the mausoleum can be reached through a long 20 meter corridor , which leads to a circular cell once divided into two floors. There were also skylights on the ceiling, which ensured clean air and light. Don't think that Roman tombs were all underground, dark and gloomy, since mausoleums of this type in particular enjoyed particular comforts that guaranteed a fairly long life. After all, they were built for important personalities. In our case, for example, in recent years, during excavations, something was actually found inside Monte del Grano. A beautiful sarcophagus, now exhibited in the Capitoline Museums, which according to tradition even belonged to the emperor Alexander Severus. Fascinating of course, it's a shame that the dating attests that the artefact dates back to the Hadrianic era (around 150 AD). It doesn't end here, however, because like everything ancient here in Rome, this mausoleum also had a sort of second life. After all, having a building of this size, in an area not previously protected by the Aurelian Walls, could have been excellent for controlling the entire area  with a defensive and military function, for example. In the case of Monte del Grano we know, from an inscription found on site, that a tower was built at the beginning of the sixteenth century, with the clear aim of keeping an eye on this peripheral area of Rome. Let us not forget that areas outside the city center are, even today, from a toponymic point of view associated with towers (think about that one of Tor Pagnotta, for example) which since the Middle Ages were built by families or local lords who were in possession of those land.

The tower no longer exists, having collapsed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sad, just as sad is the fact that, perhaps, we will never know who was buried here, unless other written or archaeological evidence turns up, but it is certain that only a prominent personality, probably very close if not inside the imperial family, could having had the honor of receiving this magnificent structure as a home for eternal rest. Today it is vegetation that dominates, and it is precisely this, in my opinion, that once again attests to how much, despite the passage of time, Rome is in constant change , on the one hand, and on the other, still with its incredible past.